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Fanime Con 2016

On May 27th to 30th, 2016, Fanime Con returned to the San Jose McEnery Convention Center in Downtown San Jose, CA. This year marked a lot of firsts for me as I always try to make the most out of the convention since previous years consisted of just lounging around and playing video games. The 2015 edition marked the first time I ever cosplayed while this one marked many new events for me.

The previous year, was my first event where I decided to cosplay whereas this one, I came with four cosplays. The cosplays I decided to go with included two different Hanayo Koizumi cosplays from “Love Live”, the alternate Ryu cosplay from “Ultra Street Fighter IV”, and Eren Jaeger as a Titan from “Attack on Titan”.

Although I live in San Jose and live 10-15 minutes away from the venue, this event marks the first time I ever stayed at a hotel at the venue for a Fanime Con. Normally, I can just get to the venue by driving but due to needing space to change in and out of cosplays, I needed to stay near the venue. Driving while being extremely tired was also not a good idea. Being able to crash immediately after a long day sounded ideal.

Normally, when I cosplay I don’t get much of a reaction. For cosplaying Ryu, I could get a moderate one. I felt like I had to push the envelope just a little bit which is how I ended up cosplaying Ryu in his alternate one cosplay from Ultra Street Fighter IV. I actually felt at home as it was for the Street Fighter cosplay gathering. If there’s any place where I would feel comfortable, it’s at anything involving the fighting game community. Street Fighter as a franchise will forever be in my heart, and it also helped that I got a very positive reaction to my cosplay which I never seem to get from any other character I’ve ever done.

Although raves are never my thing, this event is the first time I stayed at one from the beginning to the end. Normally, I would just attend to make a cameo, but for this one I went around multiple rooms just to check out the various DJs running their sets. I literally stayed until the bitter end which was at 4am in the morning.

Another new thing for me was running my own cosplay gathering. I normally base my cosplays around what specific cosplay gatherings are available. At this one, I saw that there were no cosplay gatherings for the anime series “Attack on Titan”, so I took the liberty to run one myself. I had decided to run it on the first day because I was aware of people having other cosplay gatherings on other days along with myself. It blew me away when I saw that there were a lot of people attending the event which I will be forever grateful for and reminded me why I was in the most uncomfortable cosplay possible.

The most important event that this convention revolved around was the masquerade. For eight or more months, the preparation to compete at this event was strenuous. The idea was to have a nine member team to do a choreographed dance number from the anime, “Love Live”. It was extremely hard to get a nine member team to even get together all at once along with making the cosplay and learning the dance moves. Not everyone was on the same page and members joined and left the group many times. The hardships were there until we actually had to compete and ended up winning an award for “best design”. Months of preparation was worth it to show everyone in attendance what we were capable of.

I felt that this Fanime by far was the most productive along with being the best one yet. I ended up making new friends, strengthening bonds with others, and met all kinds of different people. I made new kinds of experiences and made the impossible very possible. A lot will have to happen for 2017 to top this one.